Armen’s Turn from Classical Pianist to Software Developer
The videos you find of Armen Sarkisian on YouTube start with him walking onstage toward a piano, wearing a suit and tie. Before he sits down, he bows to the audience, who applauds and then listens in silence as his hands move effortlessly across the piano keys, his eyebrows lifting every so often. The scene is almost otherworldly.
These days, he’s rarely in formal wear and is more likely to be coding on his keyboard than playing the piano. A classically trained pianist with a Master’s in Piano Performance from Juilliard and an album released by a traditional record label, he’s currently enrolled in the Align Program, which provides a direct pathway to a MS in computer science for students from all undergraduate backgrounds.
What’s a virtuoso pianist with a passion for the Russian Silver Age doing in a tech program? “I didn’t want to be so one-dimensional,” he said. “I wanted to be able to learn other things and have a more direct impact on the world.”
Also, the career prospects weren’t great for classical pianists, he explained. While his friends who played the viola, the violin, the cello, and even the oboe had the chance to audition for lifetime jobs at orchestras, as a piano player, he had only two choices: pursuing stardom as a solo performer or studying for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in the hopes of teaching at a university someday — with no guarantees. “Unfortunately, there aren’t a whole lot of material rewards in being a classical musician in this day and age. It’s an incredibly tough industry to thrive in,” he said.
Pivot to tech
While figuring out his next move after graduation, Armen began to consider a career in tech. Having grown up in Silicon Valley (his father is a software engineer), he was familiar with tech culture and knew that it was possible to break into the industry through unconventional paths. “Tech made sense. I wasn’t about to try to study law or go to medical school,” he explained.
He began to teach himself how to code while freelancing as a musician in New York City. Then, when COVID-19 made it hard to keep working with music, he shifted his focus to programming. He took a preparatory course for graduate studies in computing, then applied for the Align Master’s Program.
Getting accepted meant moving from the east coast to the west coast, and back with his parents; drastically shrinking the space music took in his life; and going from known expert to complete beginner. It wasn’t — and still isn’t — an easy transition. “It’s been stressful, because I’m trying to cram all this new knowledge in a short amount of time, and I’m trying to break into a new industry in a pretty tough economic moment. It’s also incredibly exciting and I’m really optimistic about my future,” he said.
Pursuing mastery
His optimism comes, in part, from knowing what he needs to do to get where he wants to go. “So much of my piano education was learning the right approach to practicing,” he said. “A lot of people don’t understand. You can’t just play a song ten times and then you know it. You have to deconstruct it.”
He’s using the same approach — which involves identifying areas for improvement and working on them one by one — to improve his coding skills. “I’m still figuring out how to practice [coding] the right way, but, amazingly enough, I think there are a lot of similarities between playing the piano and writing a program. There’s a lot of problem-solving in both.”
Having dedicated nearly two decades to studying the piano, Armen knows that mastery takes time and persevering is key through the first (and hardest) years. “When you’re just starting [with the piano], in the first five, maybe eight to ten years, even, you’re playing these basic, beginner-to-intermediate level pieces of music that are not bad but aren’t as interesting as the really hard, flashy, pieces that you can only accomplish once you have the technique down,” he explained.
With a few years of computer science education already under his belt — including almost two years of self-study — he knows he’s only just getting started on his path to software development mastery. Still, his growing portfolio of projects, which includes a flashcard app, a 2D artillery game, a personal website, and an app for sharing memories of San Francisco, is proof of his progress. Next on his journey is gaining real-world experience: he starts his first internship as a software engineer at Siemens Digital Industries Software this July.
While he’s officially transitioned into tech, Armen’s relationship with music isn’t over. “I can still do everything that brings me fulfillment and joy,” he said. With one important difference: “Now I have the freedom to work on the projects that I really want to focus on.”
A few years from now, he hopes to release an album of original songs. He’s also curious to explore how his music and tech careers might intersect, although he’s firmly against AI-generated music. “I could design some sort of tool or software to help me write better music. I haven’t thought of it yet, but I’m sure there are cool ideas out there.”